The satire of the "not ready for prime-time players" was not ready for Web surfers.

Studio 60 The pilot for the new Aaron Sorkin show, Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip, appeared on YouTube early Wednesday before NBC, which recently signed a content-sharing deal with the site, forced its removal. The pilot is still available legally as a Netflix rental.

YouTube was the beneficiary of another NBC clip earlier this year. The comedic rap video "Lazy Sunday," which originally appeared on NBC's Saturday Night Live, landed on the site in February and was seen more than a million times before NBC's legal department made the site remove it.

The video for "Lazy Sunday" lasted for several minutes. The Studio 60 pilot is an hour-long drama, and the episode was broken into six chunks, each between 6 and 10 minutes.

Studio 60 follows an SNL-type sketch show at the fictional NBS network. In the pilot, Judd Hirsch--playing a role strikingly similar to SNL boss Lorne Michaels--stops the live show-within-a-show to let loose with a verbal tirade against corporate-owned media and "candy a** networks." The scene recalls the 1970s drama Network, in which enraged newsman Peter Finch encouraged Americans to go to their windows and yell, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

NBC is hoping the buzz surrounding the show and its new fall season, which has been growing thanks to the Internet, will translate into ratings. If the YouTube "leak" is any indication, the peacock should feel confident--the Studio 60 pilot was watched more than 20,000 times and rated four-and-a-half stars out of five.